Music Matters - A Movie About The Payola Law

Payola, which occurs when a record label pays to have a song played on the radio, was outlawed in 1960, but a new documentary called Music Matters tries to make a point that the law was created for the wrong reason.

The film states that it was actually a racist backlash against Elvis Presley, since he was singing a white version of songs made by black artists. The film also states that if payola was still in force, market forces would self-regulate the industry, so a bad song wouldn't play long on a station no matter how much the label paid since it would hurt the station's ratings.

Whether you agree or not with the premise of the film, it's still worth watching below.

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A Look At The Streaming Revenue Pie

Here's an interesting infographic from Statista that shows exactly what the online digital revenue pie looks like as compared to 2008.

At the end of 2014 there was about 28 million paid streaming music subscribers, which has now topped 41 million so the numbers are quite a bit larger in 2015.

As you can see, downloads still owns 52% of the market, and while that will undoubtedly decrease in 2015, it will still remain a substantial piece of the puzzle for at least a few more years.

What is growing is the number of people that are adopting streaming, either via the free tier or paid subscription, and this looks to really take off now that Apple Music has launched.

What's interesting is that 15% of the market is still made up of ring tones, ring backs and various other technologies that we don't even consider these days, but are still generating significant income.


You will find more statistics at Statista

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Like A Coiled Snake Spotify Strikes Back At Apple Music

If you thought it was a coincidence that Spotify released new and much improved subscriber numbers directly after the big Apple Music announcement at its World Wide Developer Conference, then you haven’t been paying attention to what many are calling the “Streaming Wars.”

At least in the short term, Spotify is still the market leader in the interactive music streaming space, and the company did its best to put an exclamation point on that fact by providing a lot of new information, strategically waiting a day for the Apple Music furor to die down a bit to steal a little thunder for itself.

At the end of last year, the company touted 60 million total subscribers, with 15 million of them paying the going rate of $9.99. That number far outpaced its closest rival in Deezer, with only 6 million paid subscriptions, and others like Rdio and Tidal that fall below the 1 million mark.

But Spotify’s new user numbers show a striking increase in a short time, with the company announcing it now has 75 million users, of which 20 million are now paid subscribers. This makes the company a major player even when compared to the non-interactive streaming side of things, as Pandora only sports 79 million total users, with the vast majority of those using the free tier. 

While user numbers are solid proof of growth, another part of the same announcement may be even more important. The company also reported another round of funding for $526 million, which places its valuation at around $8.53 billion (keep in mind that it has yet to turn a profit). 

Among the partners that invested in this round include Swedish telecommunications firm TeliaSonara AB and Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth-fund, so there are some deep pockets with a large stake in the company’s success. Read more on Forbes.

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Apple Pushes A Fake Indie Artist

The Real Loren Kramer

While Apple was introducing its new Music service on Monday at the WWDC, it made a point of saying that indie artists would be prime contributors to the service. That's when Loren Kramer was introduced and given about 10 seconds of prime airtime that any indie artist would die for.

The problem is that Kramer seems to as close to a true indie artist as a Blackberry is to an iPhone.

With the world filled with hard working artists slugging it out gig after gig, recording after recording, Apple instead chose an artist who hasn't played many gigs and has no presence on iTunes, Spotify, Facebook, or even a web page. He has a Twitter feed but that only went live right after the announcement.

What Kramer does have going for him is a manager who used to work directly for Apple Music head Jimmy Iovine back in his Universal Music days, and a whole list of privileged friends thanks to a wealthy family that sent him to exclusive Hollywood schools. Kramer is in fact a visual artist who's the editor of an art magazine called Megazine, hardly what you'd call indie music credentials.

Apple really whiffed badly on this one, and while it might not rise to the U2 fiasco of last year, it still proves that the company is now surprisingly tone-deaf to what's currently going on in music.

This could also bode poorly for the thousands of indie artists that were hoping that Apple Music might somehow become a new source of income. If the company couldn't get something as simple as this right given the thousands of worthy candidates available, then it really shows where the company's priorities lie.

So good for you if you're on a major label, Apple Music will welcome you with open arms. If you're an indie, not so much.

You can read some excellent posts about this in Digital Music News and The Next Web.

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More Music Choices Creates Fickle Fans

Just about every streaming or download music service these days has at least 20 million songs available to choose from, and some have even more. This is great for the consumer in that the choices are enormous, but there's also a negative component it brings as well.

Mark Mulligan's Music Industry Blog post shows that because of all these choices, people are actually listening to their favorite music less than ever before.

When people purchased music in the past, be it either vinyl, CD or download, they tended to listen to it over and over first because they paid for it, but also because it was the only new music they could get on demand. With new music now available at your fingertips, this is no longer the case thanks to the short attention span of just about everyone today.

What this seems to mean is that fans now have a shorter-term relationship with the artists they like than every before. If you listen to a song or an artist over and over, you tend to identify more. That's no longer the case, so it means that there are fewer deep fan-artist relationships now being built.

This has long term implications in that 5 or 10 years down the road there won't be as many artists capable of filling an arena or drawing a festival crowd - obviously not good for the business.

Mulligan also makes the point that because there is so much mediocre music now available, it's becoming more and more difficult for quality music to rise above the clutter.

The only saving grace is that music follows technology. While streaming may be the distribution method of choice right now, something new could completely rewrite the music business as we know it and make us throw the above out the window.  Tomorrow's music and music industry will likely be quite different than what we see today.

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Apple Music Just Might Prove Skeptics Wrong

There have been plenty of naysayers willing to condemn Apple’s new Apple Music service before it was even launched, but they might just have to take back their words if today’s presentation outlining the service was any indication.

It’s certainly true that Apple has fallen behind its competition when it comes to music streaming, and that Apple Radio wasn’t the resounding success that everyone anticipated. It’s also true that Beats Music, which the company paid a bundle for last year, wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire and quite possibly wouldn’t even be around today had Apple not thrown it a life preserver.

Then there’s the fact that while Apple touts 850 million credit cards on file for iTunes, more of them apply to the app side of the store than music, making the number slightly dubious when anticipating subscriber numbers.

All of that could lead you to believe that Apple Music could easily come and go after the initial wave of enthusiasm from today’s announcement died down.

If you watched today’s presentation however, it was readily apparent that there were a number of features shown that differentiate Apple Music from the competition, any one of which could make a big enough difference to help it dominate the industry in no time.

First and most important is its ease of use. Apple Music appears to be very easy to navigate, with My Music, For You and New tabs designed to help you negotiate the music that you’ve already purchased, find recommendations based on your previous playlists or listening trends, and discover recently released music. A mini-player complete with artwork also provides easy to access control of the music being played as well, and a playlist function makes it easy to add your own graphics, reorder songs in the list, and search the library to find additional music. Read more on Forbes.

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EDM Market Still Growing But More Slowly

Electronic Dance Music has been one of the biggest trends in music in recent years, but it looks to be slowing down.

According to the latest IMS Business Report 2015, EDM grew about 12% last year, which on the surface is great, but down considerably from the the 37% growth of the previous year.

The total market for EDM is now estimated at a very substantial $6.9 billion. North America represents about 29% of that market at around $2 billion.

Still, many data points indicate the genre is beginning to flatten out. First of all, U.S. track sales of EDM stood at 4.6%, the same as in 2013. The same with music festivals, although they're still huge with over 1.4 million attending.

One area that's still is growing is DJ equipment, especially in the United States. The U.S. accounts for 40% of the DJ equipment market, which grew 16% last year. As a comparison, stringed instruments and amplifier sales fell 2 and 3% last year.

Of course, the major DJs are still hot and making more money than ever, with the top 10 earning about $305 million last year. Calvin Harris tops the list at $66 million, or about $1 in every hundred brought into the industry.

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8 Steps To Discovering Your Brand

We all have a brand, but most of us just don't know what it is. Branding yourself, your music, your band or your product is extremely important if you want to become a success in the music business however, so it's important that we discover what our brand is - and the sooner the better.

Here's an excerpt from my Social Media Promotion For Musicians book that provides 8 steps that you can use to look inside yourself, your music, or your business to begin to discover your brand.

"1. What name are you using? Am I using a business name or product/service name that’s most comfortable to me now? Can I name the service I provide something other than a generic name? Is the name easy to say and remember?

2. What makes my business or product stand out from everyone else? What do I do? How would I like to be perceived? If you’re a service business, list your core specialties, then narrow it down to 3, then narrow it to 1. If you have a product, list its benefits, then narrow it down to 3, then narrow it to 1.

3. Who do I wish to serve? How do I do it? Describe the people that you currently do business with or are your customers. Describe the people you would like to do business with, or the customers you’d like to attract.

4. What is the current image of the business or product? How do my current customers describe it? Ask a variety of people, then extract the commonalities.

5. What’s my customer service like? How do people feel when they work or interact with me? How do they feel if they come to me with a problem with a product or service that my businesses has provided?

6. What does my business stand for? Is there a cause I really believe in? What are my values? What really matters to me? What would I never do?

7. What’s the look of the business? What colors represent the business? Is there a certain type of clothing that represents the business?  Does the business name or product suggest an image?

8. Is there a current brand that I identify with? Why?"

If you can answer these questions, you're well on your way to not only discovering your brand, but developing it into a powerhouse as well.

You can read more from Social Media Promotion For Musicians and my other books on the excerpt section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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Metal The Most Popular Genre On Spotify

It's easy to think that pop music is the most popular genre in the world, especially if you listen to radio a lot, but that's not the case - at least according to Spotify.

It turns out that globally, metal is at least in the top 10 genres and is usually in the top 5. The genre also has the most listener loyalty, with pop a distant second, followed by folk, country and hip-hop.

The genres most popular artists include Metallica, Slayer, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Sepultura, Pantera, Cradle of Filth and Anthrax.

Of course, this is no surprise to metal fans, but the major labels should take note. There are some hard core fans there that still buy physical product.

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The Social Video World Is Changing

Until recently, YouTube had the market cornered on video both by users and brands. If you wanted the greatest interaction with your fans, that's where you'd go.

That's all changed recently since Facebook has put such a huge emphasis on video. As a result, a number of surprising facts about social video have come into play thanks to data from Socialbakers. Here's what they found.

• The top 1,000 profiles on both YouTube and Facebook are uploading 4X the number of videos on Facebook now. Many big brands have even stopped posting on YouTube altogether in favor of Facebook. That said, there are still brands and large media publishers that still enjoy big gains from posting on YouTube.

• In terms of interactions, Facebook videos perform much better than other platforms. Organic fan reach is 3X higher than YouTube. They're also shared a lot more. 

• Instagram is still mostly a picture platform, but it's being used more and more by brands for short videos. The problem is that most people still don't relate to videos on the platform, and would prefer to get their videos from elsewhere.

• YouTube videos are still the most commonly shared on Twitter.

The takeaway is that YouTube is losing market share to other platforms, and what that means is you should also consider other platforms besides YouTube for your videos. Don't abandon YouTube though, because it's still a powerhouse.

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Shazam Adds Visual Recognition

Shazam answered the age-old question of "What's the name of that song?", but soon the app will be able to do much more.

The company has now added a visual recognition element to the app, which means that you'll be able to point your phone at a poster, print media, or some merch to unlock some additional online content.

Yes, QR codes already do much the same thing, but they're clunky, sometimes difficult to read, and pretty ugly. This new element allows a company to register the artwork with Shazam, and the artwork then acts as a built-in QR code itself when triggered by the phone's camera.

Walt Disney Company, Harper Collins, and Target have already signed on to the service, but the company is in talks with the major record labels and the promoters of several large festivals.

QR codes held so much promise but were ultimately underused. Perhaps Shazam has finally found the key to visual recognition.

The new logo is built around a camera icon, as seen on the left.

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Producers, Mixers and Engineers Might Get Royalties

A new bill in the U.S. House of Representatives has been introduced to give producers, engineers and mixers a mandatory piece of the royalty pie. The Allocation For Music Producer Act, or AMP Act (H.R. 1457) is designed to correct an injustice that continues to carry on for all producers and engineers except the elite.

It's been standard since the late 60s for producers to get a royalty on the records they produce, but they had to negotiate their own deal with either the record label or the act they were working for. Engineers rarely had a deal for royalty points, and when they did it was for a substantially smaller amount than the producer.

The AMP act would create a statutory right for producers and engineers to receive royalties from digital sales and streaming. This would be handled through Sound Exchange.

Producers have increasingly found it difficult to get paid in recent years, since their royalty stream was based on physical sales and usually not on digital. As a result, they've had to exist on the advances they received, which have shrunk since budgets are generally much smaller than in the past, except in the case of superstar acts.

Sound Exchange collects from radio-like streaming services like Pandora, SiriusXM and cable TV and splits the revenue 3 ways; 50% to the copyright holder, 45% for the artist, and 5% for non-featured musicians like studio musicians.

The AMP Act proposes that 2% be set aside for the producer and engineer, and that will come out of the artist's 45%.

So many producers and engineers have been responsible for making some major hits what they are, yet there are many cases of them not even being credited, let alone paid for the success of their work. The AMP Act hopefully will finally make it happen.

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